Nothing makes us happier than booting up a hot new 3D game to find out it has a good built-in benchmarking function. Sure, synthetic 3D benchmarks like 3DMark 05 are useful for what they are, but nothing is better than benchmarking an actual game. We currently benchmark graphics cards with games like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Doom 3, and Far Cry, but we're always looking for "new blood," as it were. Time honored standbys like Unreal Tournament 2004 simply don't pose much of a challenge to modern 3D hardware.

Enter Monolith's new shooter F.E.A.R.. Monolith has a history of great shooters, with such critically acclaimed titles as No One Lives Forever (1 and 2), Aliens vs. Predator 2, and Tron 2.0 under its belt. For the past several games, Monolith has built its own engine technology, which is then turned over to Touchdown Entertainment (formerly LithTech) to be licensed to other developers. F.E.A.R. represents something new for the Monolith team, though. Rather than creating a game technology that can run well on rather average machines, they took aim at the high ground, creating a DirectX 9 engine that can really make even the beefiest machine sweat. We'll show you how we use it to benchmark graphics cards.